Deepin 15: A Beautifully Crafted Linux Distribution for Everyone

Deepin OS is a revolutionary distribution. OK. I’ll stop right there; maybe that was giving a little too much credit. But I’ve got to be honest with you, nothing quite easily blows me away when it comes to Linux distributions as of late.

Deepin 15 specifically is awesome! Installer is dead simple and straight forward that even my grandma could install in on a PC.

This will be my third distribution in a row to review and by far the easiest of them to get working with out of the box. You can go through my last two reviews on Linux here:

I had initially tried Deepin OS some two years back and I was riddled with install problems and stability issues – perhaps was due to the fact that it had just switched to a relatively new Ubuntu base as at then? i couldn’t possibly tell as the particular image of Deepin I tried was tagged as a stable release.

Deepin OS 15

Deepin has changed name and base four times over it’s 12 years of existence; it originally started out as Hiwix 0.1 in February, 2004 with a stacking windows manager called IceWM and Morphix as its base after which they changed their name to Hiweed Linux; this time around, using the Xfce desktop environment and a Debian as the core.

As at version 2.0, Hiweed Linux was now using the LXDE desktop environment with an Ubuntu base and this was in 2008.

They continued with Ubuntu as their base until Deepin 2014.3 while switching through various desktop environments in the process.

They however, initiated the release of their own desktop environment in the year 2013 which was precisely when I first tried Linux but didn’t exactly buy the idea at the time.

DDE – Deepin desktop environment would be the actual name for the GUI interface that shipped with Deepin from three years back and it’s currently at version 2.0 (which debuted with the first point release of Deepin in 2014).

The advantages of Deepin spans across its multiple features that mostly has to do with it Desktop environment.

DDE is no doubt the best thing about Deepin 15 and also the Debian base it’s built on (for a rock-sold experience albeit it’s a slow release cycle) which is to many the best decision they could have made – however, that did come at a price as Deepin 15 will be lacking of the slew of apps that once available to it easily via its inbuilt app store.

Among the features and functionalities that come with Deepin are: a refined DDE, a much easier and straight-forward installer, the switch from an Ubuntu base to Debian sid, Deepin 15 now focuses on internationalization (as it now has over 30 languages to choose from during install).

Deepin now optimizes the desktop experience according to the capability of your hardware, more sound and animation effects have been added to further enhance the DDE experience, Deepin has also reached an important cooperative relationship with Intel in regards the utilization of Crosswalk Project to enable web apps to run naively on its platform and much more.

Other interesting improvements with the Deepin 15 release includes the Linux 4.2 Kernel, change of the HTML5 and WebKit base for the desktop to Qt, and Mutter as the new windows manager.

Bash has now replaced Zsh as the default terminal shell, Upstart replaced by Systemd as seen in Ubuntu 16.04, and GCC 5.3.1 as the base compiler.

The most prominent features of the Deepin Desktop Environment however, are the Panel that can take is customizable in three custom inbuilt looks (Fashion mode, Efficient mode, and Classic mode), a unique Control Center that puts all your settings in one place for easy access, and it’s own set of applications for the most basic things which are Deepin Music Player.

Deepin Media Player, an exceptionally modern Deepin Software Center, Deepin Terminal, Deepin Screenshot, Deepin Cloud (for cloud printing) and a new Deepin User app that lets you report bugs or request new features that you’d like to see in the next iteration of the operating system.

The images are self descriptive which in essence is me implying that there’s absolutely no need for a step by step guide as you’ll easily breeze through with the installation without no help.

However, you might want to take note of a few things which include your tool of choice to get the image onto your USB disk.

You have the options of Rufus or the Deepin USB write tool called “Deepin Boot” that can be found inside the image itself – use Winrar, 7zip or Gzip on a Linux system to extract the tool and use it to create a bootable USB.

Also, if you’re looking to install it in a dual-boot configuration, you’ll need to create a separate partition for Deepin from your current operating system first before you proceed with installing.

Deepin OS Installation

Create New Account During Deepin OS Installation

Deepin Installation Language Selection

Select Deepin OS Boot Loader

Deepin OS Installation Process

Deepin OS 15 Desktop

Deepin OS Movie

Deepin Installation Completed

Deepin OS Boot Menu

I’d assume you’ve had a successful install? But just incase you’ve ran into any issues with installing or post-installation, don’t hesitate to comment down below with your problems and we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

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22 Responses

I’m using Deepin 15.5, but I cannot type in the Korean language. Although I can switch between English and Korean on the dock, the letters stay the same, only English. How can I fix this problem? Help urgent!

I’ve been using Deepin 15.7 for a week. I fell in love instantly. The absolute most beautiful DE in my opinion. I come from Linux Mint and it differs a bit. Its not as easy to work from the terminal, many of the lines from tutorials just dont work in Deepin.

Like when trying to install extra codecs so you can get Vivaldi browser to show videos in Facebook och Netflix. Usually you just write “sudo apt update && sudo apt install fsearch-trunk” but it wont work in deepin. adding repositories gives message like: “Updating from such a repository can’t be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.”

Even though I just cant stop using this beautiful and fast distro (I just use firefox instead of Vivaldi).

Beautiful OS but it is from CHINA! I would rather the NSA watch me than CHINESE Nationals possibly controlling my machine. I have nothing to hide so OS from US is always the best. Look around the world…Apple MAC OSX, Microsoft Windows, etc are all US made and created used globally – even the Chinese.

Chinese aims to be like US at everything to the point they created cities to look like US cities, they dye their hair, copy iPhones, trying to create Hollywood like in China, copy Air Jordans, etc – It’s the copy cat center of the Universe. The only problem is that Chinese people will always look Chinese – not European or Anglos.

Hey dude, you showed yourself as nationalist in your outcry. scared in case some other countries could provide value as well? should one refrain himself from using this chinese creation just because you are doing it, just because apple, microsoft already provide software that already many are using? in case no one on this site noticed your scare brought you at the end of your rant deep into racism. Believe me there is no problem that chinese look different than …anglos. go now and don’t ever again sin.

I’d rather the Chinese watch me. I’ve never heard of China doing overseas renditions, but the Americans regularly do it. I am on the opposite spectrum from you. i have nothing to hide from China, but my values do regularly differ from the west, and the west did say either you’re with us or against us.

I am definitely not with them. I hope in the future the Chinese can create an os from scratch to prevent any inference or “watching” from the west like this Ubuntu based os, and all other operating systems including android, osx, windows, etc. the world needs an alternative. it’s sad China isn’t doing more.

I’ve installed Deepin 15.2 in VirtualBox on Windows 7. Has anyone figured out how to get the VirtualBox Linux guest additions installed in Deepin? With Linux Mint and Ubuntu, I didn’t have to do anything, so either they got installed automatically or they were included in the distro. With PCLinuxOS I think I had to manually run vboxlinuxadditions.run and agree to supersede existing (non-functional) additions “installed via another method” or something like that. With KaOS, I succeeded in getting them installed, but I don’t remember how. With Deepin … nothing doing. Any tips would be appreciated; being stuck with the wrong screen size and no access to shared Windows folders is no fun, even just for a trial run.

By the way, update and software downloads are indeed dramatically slower than with other distros. The distro is attractive and seems well thought-out at first blush, but if Deepin can’t get hosting on some reliable high-speed mirrors and the slow-download problem persists, it could be a deal-breaker.

I’m in love with deepin truly takes Linux to a new age, my only problems with it the slow updates even I changed the mirror (most of mirrors are timeout or slow or medium ) non of them gave me my actual internet speed.

The second problem is the deepin store it doesn’t show any images of the application and the download speed is also too slow it’s like 25-50 kb/sec and it supposed to be 1.25 m/sec. hope they fix it quickly because it’s really nice OS

Hi, I used Deepin last year but i take off because the problems beginning deepin 15, but after they solve the problem i would try to install but the installation process come down because can’t write on the hard disk…

I think may be my hark disk have defects but initially i had only deepin 14, now i have W7 and Crunchbang++ waiting to change my notebook hard disk.

i dont suppose your disk has any issue since you’re currently running Win 7 and Crunchbang without any problems….earlier versions of Deepin 14 were known to have issues so it’s most likely the reason why….Deepin 15 on the other is alot more stable …. so you probably should give it another shot..

I’ve used Deepin for the past few versions. Your comment about instability it correct. When the stable releases comes out I always avoid them because quality control checks are not good. There is ALWAYS stability issues and bugs. With regard to DI 15.0 it was just a few days later that 15.1 was released. I still use 14.3 on my desktop and quite frankly I am reluctant to upgrade to 15.1 because my current Ubuntu version works well for me. I have 15.1 running on an old notebook computer with mixed results (screen display issues). Once Deepin fixes the bugs I have found Deepin to be stable and one of my favourite distros. There are many, many things to like about it.Many if the little touches puts it way above others. It is truly a modern desktop unlike the XP styles of many others.

yes certainly Deepin is a great distro and that instlbility issue mostly applies to more than a few operating systems with a first point release…however, i found Deepin 15 to be extremely stable and almost bug free and the experience will mostly vary with differnt hardware which explains why you had a problem with your notebook computer …if you’re looking to upgrade, i’d advise that you tried the live system with your main hardware and see how well it runs..